If you want to be successful – really successful – with your diet program, you have to stay accountable for your diet actions. One way is to keep a food diary or log. By writing down what you eat and in what amounts, you’ll know exactly how close you came to hitting your daily calorie goals – there’s no uncertainty or ambiguity. Either you hit your targets or you didn’t, and that’s powerful accountability.

Without this type of accountability assessment in place, it’s easy to think you did well because you avoided junk food for a day, when in reality you really consumed many more calories than you actually burned. Of course, it’s almost impossible to account for every calorie day in and day out, so don’t let slightly imperfect numbers discourage you. Instead, learn to be realistic with your evaluation. As a general rule, if you’ve managed to come within 5% of your daily targets, you’re well on your way to winning the weight-loss battle!

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